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[Haspen]

Basically, lately my sister bought an improvement of our internet connection from 3mbit/s to 20mbit/s. With that, we got new IP/mask/gateway settings. I had no problem with updating them but several problems arisen.

So far I could determine that:
A) Any program that requires stable, continous connection suffers a string of disconnections (IM's and such).
B) One-shot downloads work at promised speeds (done with several YT movies - up to few minutes of data downloads, and task manager registers spikes of internet activity up to 20mbit/s).
C) Torrents and such oscillate. One second they can get as low as 0,1kb/s and next it can be 0,5mb/s.
D) The router has the same MAC address set in as the computer I write with - because this computer had the internet connection first ages ago, so router poses as this computer so our ISP doesn't do weird blocking.
E) With the above knowledge, I've plugged the 'main' internet cable to the computer - and it is the only moment where the connection works normally; IM's have stable connection and torrents go up to those 20mbit/s.

My main question would be:

What did go wrong - ISP-to-router connection, router-to-PCs connection(s), or did I forgot about something during changing the router settings?

[Tellemurius]

Why would you set the router to mac clone your computer? thats unnecessary and can cause issues with multiple computers. Is the router running DHCP or Static IP? Did you reset the router after they uped the speeds?

[Haspen]

See, this computer got internet before I could afford a router. ISP refuses to give me internet access if they see any other MAC adress on my end.

That or they have cameras in my house and know when connect wrong device to the main internet cable

DHCP on 'Internet Port' says 'FixedIP'. Our home LAN DHCP says 'ON'. And yes, I did reset the router.

[Tellemurius]

See, this computer got internet before I could afford a router. ISP refuses to give me internet access if they see any other MAC adress on my end.

That or they have cameras in my house and know when connect wrong device to the main internet cable

DHCP on 'Internet Port' says 'FixedIP'. Our home LAN DHCP says 'ON'. And yes, I did reset the router.

They won't authenticate another MAC? thats bullshit :/

[Haspen]

Don't ask me, I'm neither an IT specialist nor the one who got the internet in first place.

[Tellemurius]

Don't ask me, I'm neither an IT specialist nor the one who got the internet in first place.

call the morons and tell them you want to authenticate it with their system

[Haspen]

Will do at the morning v:

[Starver]

("This computer got internet before I could afford a router".  Dial-up, was that?  I'm not sure what else (other than a historical T1/ISDN/whatever lines, and all those older solutions were essentially premium services anyway) you might have done without a router by some name or other.)


But, anyway... that MAC situation sounds odd to me, as well.  MACs are supposed to be unique identifiers, so unless you have a different outward-facing one to the inward-facing one[1], it's possible that some of your basic problems are with OSI Layer 2 issues.  (Although I'd be surprised it worked in the first place.)

And, moreover, every (consumer) device that I've dealt with tends to come with its own default MAC that is unique (vendor-provided), and yes you (or the ISP) can use that as a very basic "are you who you say you are" (although, given you can change it at all, often, it sucks as a guarantee that someone isn't deliberately spoofing a valid device[2]), but you should be able to tell ISP that /this/ is now the MAC you wish to access (after resetting the router so it's not lying and hopefully being honest about itself).  Depending on how good your ISP is, this might mean a small amount of transition time while they and your device are working under different expectations.


I'm not sure if any of that will help the rest of your problems, though.  Sounds like you just don't have a consistent 20 m/bit connection, in the first place, but a flaky one because your ISP/telco promised you something that the line to your house can't support (perhaps due to interference on the way from the exchange/fibre cabinet involved).  And, just want to check... microfilters are being used accordingly?  Probably not a problem, but I've seen that.  Plus badly re-wired (and not telco-sanctioned) phone extensions, in one house.  It can't generally hurt (unless impractical for other reasons) to have the router (filter-)plugged directly into the primary house socket.


(It's always possible that I'm speaking from experience with totally different technical set-ups from what's relevant to you, of course.  Or just not doing a good job of explaining/understanding.  Somebody will be along to correct me, I'm sure. )


[1] Or you're conveying the inner one outwards in some form of 'bridging mode'.  Some routers are highly configurable and let you do something like that.

[2] I've worked with (and on) an academic network where they used several source-fingerprinting techniques to ensure that only properly registered machines (that had been redirected on the first attempt to access a web-page to a server explicitly for registration) were given full(-ish) reign to do their network chattering.  But I digress, and they never let me see the entire database that was produced, either. 

[Haspen]

Oh, you misunderstood me

What I meant, was that 'this computer got internet connection in 2006, and I bought up router to connect internets to other computer in 2007'

The internet was working fine up until the 'upgrade' and change of IP settings, though. Had no idea that this will go so badly :/

[Starver]

Still, most of the things I could suggest would help most for someone who had a non-working system, post-change.  (And I tend to overuse IPCONFIG /RENEW, but it's amazing how many times that gets things working, even without a /FLUSHDNS, but that's generally for non-working systems that need shocking into recognising a new RFC1918 range or whatever.)

Given everything, I'd be looking seriously somewhere between the exchange and the router.  If it's the external POTS that's wrong, it's out of your hands (and maybe the upgrade was precipitious and a promise the ISP/telco couldn't fulfil), but if it's an internal-wiring situation between the main entry-point and one (or several) of the attachment points then you can perhaps resolve that a lot easier.  As already said, I think, so I won't unnecessarily and redundantly repeat myself, again and again, any more.

[Tellemurius]

If the router still have issues after the mac auth its safe to say it's dead.

[Haspen]

Been with contact with the ISP guys and they assured me that the mac is authenticated and that everything on 'them-router' connection is working okay.

Is it maybe that my (almost) 7 years old router can't cope with 20mbit/s? :I

[Starver]

I'm going to say Yes.  I was under the impression (probably misread) that you'd bought a new router to handle the 20mbit/s traffic and given it the same MAC as the old router (which, it appears, it still is), which had been working all along under the MAC address as "your pre-router computer" (although I think you clarified that, but now I know I continued to be muddled I'm not sure I understood your demuddling correctly... )

But I confess that I'm not entirely sure when the cut-off is, when hardware from a few years back starts to become less likely to be able to deal with modern speeds.  It might well be that seven years ago was well within that gap.  My memory fails me.  And it probably depends on what national telco standards you're subjected to...  South Korea would have been way ahead, some other countries I could mention still aren't anywhere near, but of course the hardware is available, once it exists at all, and international brands would surely keep up to at least a decent point close to the bleeding edge...  Make and model?

(And, again, if there's a problem I'd expect it to either be working at a throttled down speed or not work at all, not "works at 20, but with dropouts".  I'd ask a colleague of mine for his experience, but he'd probably complain that I'm dealing with your problem for free instead of getting on with my regular work!  )

[Haspen]

Chronology of internet shenaningans (for Starver ):

late 2005 - This PC gets internet connection
early 2006 - Router get so second PC can be connected
late 2012 - Speed upgrade from 3mbit/s to 20mbit/s + new connection settings, router starts going stupid

And router is:
Netgear, cable, model RP614v4

[Tellemurius]

Chronology of internet shenaningans (for Starver ):

late 2005 - This PC gets internet connection
early 2006 - Router get so second PC can be connected
late 2012 - Speed upgrade from 3mbit/s to 20mbit/s + new connection settings, router starts going stupid

And router is:
Netgear, cable, model RP614v4

holy damn that's a dinosaur :/
Yea go buy a new one